Pleasant Valley High, led by the top three overall finishers, were tourney champs again, with a record-breaking score of 370, while rival Chico placed second with a 385.

Paradise, meanwhile, finished 10 strokes better than last week, yet still remains way behind perhaps the two best golf teams in the Eastern Athletic League and Northern Section. The Bobcats, behind Ethan Hutt's team-low 95 and a 98 from fellow junior Eric Poll, finished with a team score of 506 in its final tuneup before EAL play begins against PV, Chico, Oroville and Las Plumas at noon Thursday at LP's Table Mountain GC.

"It's been a good warmup so far and the kids have been showing improvement in all the invite tournaments," Paradise coach Tom Fegley said.

Fegley went on to to say that PV remains the best team in the area at this stage in the season.

"Yeah, it looks that way at least on paper," he said. "They're pretty strong."

The Vikings were led on Monday by a freshman golfer, who has been somewhat of a surprise to everyone.

Noah Norton shot a tournament-low three-under 69 to lead the Vikings for the second straight week.

"It's certainly unusual, you don't have people that roll right into freshman year of high school and play golf the way he does," said PV coach Dave Crawford on Norton. "He's a unique talent and by far the best freshman I've seen."

He took advantage of a long drive that helped him capture a number of birdies on par-5 holes.

Holes 5 and 9 — two of the most difficult as they bordered around 500 yards from the tee box — were arguably two of Norton's best, as he came away with birdies on both of them to stake an early lead on both his foursome and the field. He even two-putted at No. 9 to birdie the hole, which speaks directly to the length of Norton's drives and ability to chip around the green.

"Not too many kids work harder than Noah does in this area, (so) I think PV is going to be really, really strong this year," Fegley said.

Norton was followed by senior Tyler Collier's 2-under 70 and Darren Fegley's even par 72 to round out the top three placers of the invitational.

"We have high expectations for the year (because) we're not a super young team," Crawford said. "Of the top six, three of them are seniors."

The top finisher for Chico was Taylor Manna, who shot a 2-over 74. Cooper Koslofsky and Aiden Hight — the latter being the son of Paradise varsity boys basketball coach Jerry Hight — came within strokes of Manna with a 77 and 78, respectively.

Crawford knows Chico will keep improving as early as Thursday when the teams meet again.

"It's us and Chico," he said. "Chico, you look at those scores (and) when you can go top to bottom in the 70s you've got a good team. We got to stay (on) our game (because) they're going to push us."

Oroville's Chad DaSilva led the Tigers to a score of 584, while Las Plumas' Jeremy Hart-Bode carded a team-low 85 to lead the Thunderbirds to an overall score of 528.